


we're like the opposite of entropy

by ginnystar (ginny_star)



Category: Scorpion (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Happy has emotional walls, Toby is a puppy, missing moments and missing scenes and mini aus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-03-07 00:07:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 9,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3153398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginny_star/pseuds/ginnystar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He orbits Happy like so many objects orbit a star - because the pull of her personality, of her being is too strong a force to be denied. What they have, what they are? He thinks it might be for eternity.</p>
<p>(And she doesn't mind really, not one bit.)</p>
<p>aka: Drabbles, ficlets and Quintis bits and pieces that I've posted on Tumblr as northerngirlchild. They might be ever so slightly edited for spelling, wording etc.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. everyday i wear my heart on my sleeve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1x07: father's day

Toby wears his heart on his sleeve because there's no other way he knows how to.

Sometimes it’s like he’s not even a Genius, not really - it’s the rest of the world that’s simply hilariously stupid.

Behavioural tics and traits  _scream_  out at him, highlighted in glowing neon colours. The way people dress, the angle at which they tilt their head, the shoulder they prefer to sling their bags on - everything is an open book, an easy step-by-step ‘how-to’ instruction manual on how to speak to  _this_  person or how to predict  _that_  person’s movements. Honestly, when you’ve been as _aware_ as he’s been all his life, you end up believing the rest of the world simply interacts through blind guessing. It’s a wonder that humans ever made it past the Ice Age, you know?

It’s why he tends to outwardly voice his thoughts, why he’s thought of as a smart-ass that ‘runs his god-damn mouth’, because how else will Normals be able to understand what he’s trying to say without making it as fucking obvious as possible? No room for second-guessing his motives when he lays it out in front of them  _one-two-three_. 

It’s why he can’t help himself when Happy punches a hole into the prison wall, the words pretty much tumble out of his mouth before he can stop himself (and honestly, he’s been word-vomiting since he was twenty months old, he isn’t about to stop now),  _he’s so turned on_ right now, because he  _is_. 

So he says so.


	2. keeping me hanging on (so contagiously)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1x10: talismans  
> Because we all know there was some convincing that had to be done before they got picked up.

It takes a very great many words to convince Happy that hopping on his back is a good idea. By the time she grudgingly agrees with his  _very expert medical opinion_ , they have been walking at least an hour, and his throat is  _parched_.

"This better not be an excuse for you to fondle my ass," she warns him, hands on her hips. Her weight has heavily shifted onto her uninjured foot, unbalancing her centre of gravity - and the tightening of her jaw tells him exactly how long she has been ‘fine’ and ‘not in pain’ (yeah, like,  _stupidly long_ ). Toby glances up over his shoulder from where he is crouched in position.

“ _Please_ , Happy, it’s not like I don’t know exactly how many ways you could beat _my_ ass in a distinctly  _not_ -fun way if I tried that. And besides,” he adds as she huffs and lowers herself onto his back. “Knowing what you know now, do you think I’d do something like that and ruin any chance I’d have with you?”

It’s a gamble, he concedes, to be so blatant in his intentions, but if the cat is out of the bag anyway, what would be the point of trying to stuff it back in? Schrödinger’s cat, in this situation, is very much alive. Or dead. _Whatever_ , it is definitely one or the other.

"Do you think Walter’ll let me go back to fetch my hat? Only," he says, as Happy tries to find a comfortable position, and he absently runs through a few biofeedback exercises in his head to quell the half-hearted stirrings in his pants ( _now is not the time_ ). “I bought  _that_  hat to replace the one that dropped off the side of a building. You know, when I was _hanging over it upside-down_. It cost me a pretty- ” Happy growls and her arms tighten around his neck a little in warning.

"Shut up and move, doc," she breathes into his ear, and almost instinctively he lets out a (very quiet) whine.

He… he’s never going to be able to hear that term coming from her lips without connecting it back to this, to this moment and the exact weight and feel of her body on his back, the timbre of her voice, the grip of her  _very_ lovely thighs and -

He moves.


	3. so i take all that other stuff i said before; and i'm gonna make it work

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> post 1x12: dominoes  
> They'd all noticed. Apart from her.

He is watching her again.

Now that she’s been made aware of it, it is (completely) obvious - the half-second hesitation before the crinkle of a page turning, the _scuff_ -step his boots make against the warehouse floor as he paces from end-to-end, the heavy weight of his gaze across the room settling across her shoulders.

She can ignore it. She can let the almost feelings and burgeoning hopes roll off her like so much water off a duck’s back. She  _can_. He might give up, probably  _will_  give up - hell, they all do in the end. Everyone she has ever trusted in her life has always failed her, always found a way to hurt her, break her heart. 

(Except there’s the fresh memory of the warmth of her father’s embrace. The raw pain in his eyes as he spoke of her mother. The way his face lit up with delight when he was introduced to her friends as her dad. What he did, she realises now, he did out of  _love_.)

It will be easier, if she ignores him. Whatever…  _this_  was, it will stop, end before it really has a chance to start. No-one will get hurt. All she has to do is not look up. Not catch his gaze, not offer him a tilt of her head, or allow the tiniest of smiles to pull at the corner of her mouth. Not allow herself the hope that maybe this (whatever  _this_  was anyway) might work.

(It would be easier. It would be  _lonelier_.)

She looks up.


	4. home (part one): you’re the apple of my eye; girl, i’ve never loved one like you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Response to [Quintis Fic Challenge: Week 6](http://happy-x-toby.tumblr.com/post/107495390695/quintis-fic-challenge-week-6)
> 
> Toby gets hurt. Happy's there when he wakes.

He wakes up to the sound of a heart monitor (his) and slightly unsteady breathing (hers). When he opens his eyes, he finds her watching his face intently, a frown settling in between her eyebrows (she wants to yell at him, he can  _tell_ ), and he smiles up at her. There is morphine in his system right now, it’s probably making him a little loopy.

"Hello beautiful," Toby murmurs, throat parched and tongue dry. "Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?"

Happy’s face doesn’t change; not one micro expression offers him an indication of how she feels. When he licks his cracked lips in nervousness, she turns away to grab the glass of water on his bedside table.

_Twisted metal, burning tyres, and the sparkle of shattered glass on ruined tarmac._

_Panic, adrenaline and genuine fear clearly coursing through her veins, voice shaky but hands rock steady as she places firm, even pressure on the wound, trying so very hard to staunch the blood flow (god the bleeding there is **so much blood** )._

_You don’t get to die on me, doc, you don’t._

_Hap- it’s, it’s okay-_

_No, **fuck you** , this is not okay, you die on me and I  **swear**  I’ll kill you myself!_

She holds the straw to his lips, movements methodical and precise, but gentle. She stays his hand as he tries to brush away a droplet of water on his face, wipes it away herself. 

The crease between her brows deepens further, and there is a fierce scowl beginning to form on her very lovely features. 

"You nearly died," she hisses between clenched teeth, jaw jutting forward in her anger. "You didn’t turn left. You swerved  _right_.”

_There’s a ten tonne truck careening their way, heading straight for Walter and Cabe and there is very little time to think, there is only time to **act**.  
_

_He gets thrown from the vehicle, and then there is only pain (like ten tonnes of it - metaphorically of course), searing hot, blinding pain where a twisty piece of metal has very nicely **penetrated** his midsection._

_A face swims into view, a lovely lovingly loved face, though her eyes are wide with fear and there is a splatter of blood on her face._

_Oh, th-that’s my blood. I’m sorry, Hap._

_Even to him, his voice sounds faint, strained and distant with pain._

"But I didn’t," he says. No arrogance to it, no smirk to follow. Just simple fact. "Still here. Still pretty." (All right, so there’s a  _little_  arrogance.)

Happy looks at him for some moments, the silence stretching out between them disturbed only by the steady  _beep beep_  of the monitor. Finally, she turns away, places the tumbler on the table. Her face is hidden by the sweep of her hair, but he can hear the quiet, surreptitious sniff, can see the quick, sharp brush of her hand against her face. 

"Good," she says.  _Good, you did your best on the job. Good, you’re still able to make crappy come-ons. Good, you’re **alive**_. He moves his hand (clumsily bandaged, he notices, and he wonders which hack intern managed to screw this simple job up so badly) to cover the one still on his bed. He interlaces their fingers together, his thumb moving over hers in silent comfort.

She lets him, for a wonder.


	5. home (part two): barefoot on a summer night; never could be sweeter than with you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Response to [Quintis Fic Challenge: Week 6](http://happy-x-toby.tumblr.com/post/107495390695/quintis-fic-challenge-week-6)
> 
> Happy gets hurt. Toby's there when she wakes. (aka: the redux, remix, reverse version)

He sits as close as he can to her, his chair right up against the bedside table, and his knees pressing painfully into the metal framework of her bed. He doesn’t care. It is where he can best watch her breathe. It is where he can best watch her waking up. Because she is, thank God.  _She’s waking up_. 

"Well, hello beautiful," he manages past the lump in his throat. "Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?"

_It’s over in seconds, like so many horrific events in real life actually are._

_One minute, he is dashing down the corridor; the next, there’s a figure stepping out from behind a corner. Holding a gun, naturally, because that would be his luck. Toby instinctively starts to duck, and he hears a shout, sees her running in front of him, **blocking**  him, what the hell is she - _

_Get close enough to a gun being fired and you are susceptible to temporary tinnitus. Later, he will attribute this to the ringing in his ears in his otherwise silent world as he watches Happy (god no, please) crumple to the ground, blood seeping out between the hands clasped to her stomach._

A smile threatens to emerge, pulling at the corner of her mouth, and she makes an attempt to roll her eyes (because of course she does, she’s _Happy_ ), though the effort it takes seems to tire her.

"Wha- what," she begins, but her raspy sentence gives way to a short, dry cough, and a spasm of pain passes over her features. Toby holds out a glass of water for her, his other hand automatically adjusting her morphine intake. He waits as the grimace on her face smooths out, and she rests her head back against the pillows with a sigh.

"What happened? You kinda got in the way of a Toby-shaped bullet. Which," he adds with a rawness in his voice that surprises even him, "I did not ask you to do that, Hap. You shouldn’t, you  _didn’t_ -"

"But I did," she says, cutting off the fresh wave of panic that threatens to overwhelm him. "I didn’t have to, yeah. Maybe I  _wanted_  to.” That last is added with a defiant jut of her jaw, fierce even now as she lies wan and exhausted post-op.

_"She has a GSW, lower left side of the abdomen, there’s no exit wound, BP is low-"_

_The doctors seem to all but ignore him as they surround the bed, firing commands and questions at each other like so many chickens in a coop. He wants to grab them all and shake them, force them to listen to him, why won’t they just fucking **listen**? He raises his hands to run through his hair, to tug fretfully at the strands - and abruptly stops. _

_There is blood on them. Happy’s blood. _And suddenly nothing makes sense any more.__

_They are wheeling her away (wait, no stop, what the hell are you doing), and there’s a resident blocking his following (get out of my way you imbecile, getoutofmyway), telling him he needs to wait here, and there - the dam holding his fear at bay breaks, and he grabs the man by his scrub top, slams him against the nearest wall._

_"No, no, you don’t know what you’re doing, **none**  of you damn idiots know what you’re doing, I can help - no, get **off** me-“_

_(Cabe hauls his ass out to the waiting area, and all but sits on him. Toby sits on the floor up against a wall, pulls his legs up against his chest, eyes never moving from the doors that lead to the operating theatres.)_

He isn’t able to maintain eye contact with her, gaze dropping to stare blankly at the blankets covering her body (could have been pulled over her face, could have easily been one more body heading to the morgue, just one more lifeless mass of meat and bones, all the wonder and spark and passion that makes Happy  _Happy_  snuffed out just. like. that). His hands clench tightly into themselves (fingernails digging crescent-shaped marks against his palms) and there’s a faint roaring in his ears. He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to fight back the tears he can feel building up, and is startled by the sudden warmth of her hand on top of his.

"Hey," she murmurs, drowsiness beginning to pull at her voice. "Stop that. It’s okay, doc. I’m still here, right?"

The cold knot in his stomach loosens with surprising abruptness. She’s right, as always. She’s here. She’s  _alive_. Rehabilitation is going to be a bitch, but he  _knows_  Happy, knows she will grit her teeth and push herself through it, come out stronger at the other end. He huffs a little in wry amusement, tension slowly seeping out of his shoulders, and he turns his hand over and interlaces their fingers together. 

"Yeah, still here. Still pretty."

He expects her to pull away then, maybe roll her eyes again and diffuse the meaning in his words, like she always has done.

(She doesn’t.)


	6. come unwrap your present, doc [drabble]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (fits nowhere in current canon, but everywhere in my head okay)

_Thirty-three is old, doc_ , she says with a smirk, but the tilt of her head is encouraging.  _You better not be expecting any presents._

He’s feeling daring, emboldened by the twist of her lips and the sparkle in her eyes, and leans forward onto her workstation.  _Oh, you don’t have to buy me anything, Hap_ , he starts, but stops - is it too soon, too much? He wants her,  _just her_ , but she’ll sock him for saying it, he’s sure.

So he heads home that night, alone.

( _And finds Happy Quinn in his bed, wearing nothing but a pretty red ribbon._ )


	7. ask me once, ask me twice (i'll say yes if you're nice)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I mashed my keyboard after I found [this prompt](http://northerngirlchild.tumblr.com/post/110157340213/thecakelessachiever-deliverusfromsburb-imagine) on tumblr.
> 
> Toby and Happy propose repeatedly at different restaurants to get free food. One time, it's for real.
> 
> Happy Valentine's Day.

He is down on bended knee, she is gasping in surprise and pleasure. He asks, with all the trepidation one might expect from a man in such a situation,  _marry me?_  She accepts, with a voice that trembles,  _yes, yes I will_ , and the other diners in the room break out in applause.  _Congratulations_ , the cries call out, and they are assured by their host that their meal is complimentary. They protest, because  _no, we really ought to_ , but their host insists. 

Once outside, Happy turns to look up at Toby, who still has his arm wrapped possessively around her shoulders. “You were right.”

Toby returns her smirk with a smug grin, kisses her lightly on her forehead. “Of course I’m right,” he says. “I’m always right. Restaurant like that? Eighty per cent chance of comping a newly engaged couple’s meal for publicity purposes.”

Happy snorts, slipping the ring - a cheap thing they'd picked up downtown - off her finger. “You gonna tell me you know the likelihood of all the restaurants in LA for that kinda stunt?” 

"You wanna find out?" It’s a challenge. It’s a dare. And Happy has never been one to back down from either. 

"You’re on."

-

There is a hotel on the other side of LA that serves excellent (and  _very_ expensive) wine in their restaurant - the sort which makes the eyes water even as the mouth swoons in orgasmic triumph. Particularly as they are known for serving it paired with a molten chocolate lava pudding, which Toby knows that Happy would love to try. (They set the outside on fire, and after the pyrotechnics are done there is still gooey, divine chocolate - come on. It's like it was  _made_ for Happy.) 

They gatecrash a private event one work-slow week, dressed to the nines, and acting like they belong in this world, rubbing elbows with the echelons of the East coast. Toby takes a hotel employee aside, explaining with the look of a man sick with love of his plan to propose tonight to his girl, and the romantically inclined employee goes above and beyond to make their perfect night one to remember. 

Toby goes down on bended knee in front of snooty millionaires and budding philanthropists, espousing his love for his perfect woman, who stands with her hand in his trying her very best not to laugh or roll her eyes. "That was sappy as hell," she tells him afterwards as they clutch their ill-gotten gains (two bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon - of the very fine 2007 Dana Estates Lotus Vineyard vintage). "I can totally do better." They have escaped from their fellow party-goers, who gave them confused congratulations, and have sought refuge on a balcony in the building. Happy nudges Toby with her shoulder, eyes dancing with glee. He brushes a strand of her hair away from her face and just drinks her in. Happy, totally and completely relaxed. Happy, fizzing with the joy of a prank well pulled. Happy looking up at him with the stars in her eyes.  _Happy Happy Happy_. 

He leans in to whisper in her ear and feels the shiver that runs through her body. "I look forward to it."

-

A distraction, they need a fucking _distraction_ \- something public and eye-catching, something that means no-one will be looking for Walter, who needs to get across the room to the servers in the basement. "Five minutes!" Cabe's voice is sharp and desperate. "Happy, Toby, I don't care what the hell you need to do,  _just do it now_." 

So Happy grabs Toby's wrists as she falls to her knees, drawing a few confused murmurs from the diners around them. "Marry me," she all but shouts, and all eyes are on them in the centre of the room. "I can't imagine my life without you. You wormed your way into my life even when I pushed you away, and I'm so glad you did. You're an idiot, you say dumb things that make me want to punch you, but you're my idiot. So marry me."

Toby, after gaping at her wide-eyed like a fish, is now affecting a look of pleasure and happiness (though it wars with a look of complete incredulity that threatens to win). "Yes," he gasps, "I will be your idiot." He pulls her up to her feet for a kiss, and applause... though confused and scattered... rings out. There, out of the corner of her eye, a door opens and closes; Walter has made it in. Toby dips his head down to give her a suitably dramatic kiss and embrace. "You call that doing a better job?" It is spoken very quietly, muttered against the curl of her hair. Happy pinches him in warning - _they are still being watched_.

"Okay," Cabe says bemusedly in their ear-pieces. "Good... job, guys. We made it."

They make a general nuisance of themselves for the next ten minutes, so much so that the staff practically shoo them away with cheesecake and beer. They share it with the team, who find the whole thing entirely ridiculous and try to make them re-enact it for Ralph. (They don't.)

-

They hit a steakhouse well known for it's exquisitely aged ribeye, where Toby arranges to have the waiting staff in a semi-circle behind him as backing vocals to a song he has penned about her virtues. It is, quite frankly,  _terrible_ , and Happy has a very hard time keeping the hilarity off her face as five Stetson-hatted ‘Texaners’ croon about her 'creamy alabaster skin' and 'bewitching dark eyes'.

They get comped an ice cream.  _A freaking ice cream, what the hell_ , Toby fumes. After all the effort he went to liaising with the manager for days and  _days_ , and all they got was one lousy dessert - and a Happy Quinn in such hysterics that she cedes all driving rights to him without a fight.

"An- and then you sang about my  _wrench_ ,” Happy manages between whoops of laughter. “Before -  _holy crap my stomach_  - before you rapped about the soldering iron of  _love_ \- “

"This shall never be spoken of again," Toby mutters, hunching over the steering wheel. Happy shakes her head, unable to answer and braces herself against the dashboard as she falls apart all over again. 

-

He thinks to himself, as their game continues, that it shouldn't him as happy as it does (make his heart burst, make his hands tremble, make him feel like he can fucking fly) when she says  _yes_. 

She reminds herself every time she takes off the ring that this a dare, a challenge, and tries not to wonder at the hurt she feels when she does. (She does anyway.)

-

They are having dinner at a cosy bistro, when Toby kneels at her feet. ' _Shit_ ', she thinks. ' _He's pulled this one on me fast_ ', and doesn't even need to fake the surprise she feels.

"Happy. I - you are amazing. You're so strong, so wonderful that sometimes I've gotta wonder what you _see_ in me. We've been through a hell of a lot together, and even though we've been shot at and chased by scary people countless times, and nearly died as often, I'd go through it all again if it meant I could be here with you." He looks up at her with such earnestness, her heart skips a beat.  _Stop it_ , she tells herself firmly,  _this isn’t real_. "I count my blessings every day that of all the people in the world, you chose me to love, please believe me on that."

He takes a deep breath, and reaches into his jacket to bring out a square velvet box. With a quiet  _snick_ it opens, and - Happy can’t help it - she breathes in sharply in awe.

"Doc, you -  _that’s a_  -"

"An original key switch nut from a 1961 Ferrari California Spider? Yeah," Toby softly agrees. "I can’t afford the entire car. Not yet. But I start with this, build on it, and I figure you'll keep me around to get the rest."

She reaches out and, with trembling fingers, touches the steel ring on it’s silken shelf in reverence. This is something he has spent  _time_  thinking of. He has waited, hunted this down, negotiated with finicky dealers and sellers. Happy looks down at Toby, eyes wide. His words are too sincere. His face is too hopeful. This…  _this is_ …

"Real," she breathes. "This is real." 

Toby nods, his heart is hammering away and he swallows past the lump in his throat. “You make me want to be the best version of myself, you always have. I know this is scary, and I’m an asshole and I might not be worthy of you, but for the rest of our lives I can to  _try_ to be. Will you, Hap? Will you let me try?”

Long, horrible moments pass and Happy still does not say anything, and Toby begins to think that this is perhaps the worst idea he has ever had. He has ruined everything, she will withdraw from him, inch by agonising inch, until all that is left are bitter memories and -

"You’re an idiot, doc," Happy says quietly, and Toby can feel his heart stop. "But you’re  _my_ idiot." Relief - pure utter relief - washes through him, and Toby lets out the breath he has been holding, almost sagging to the ground. He almost can’t quite believe it, still can’t  _quite_ as he slides the key switch nut onto her ring finger. It fits perfectly.  _Of course it does._

"So that's a _yes_ , right?" 

Happy rolls her eyes at him, and cupping his face in her hands, she leans down to kiss him on the lips. “Of course I’ll marry you, dumbass.” The room breaks out in applause, but they are oblivious to it. This is real, this is them. This is only them. 

They are recognised by the waiting staff who have been warned about them, and after the hubbub dies down, they are asked to never return.

("This is all your fault," she laughs, eyes bright. He smiles, wide as the horizon, and commits this moment, this heartbeat, to memory.)


	8. these are just words (and this is just my heart)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> based on [this prompt](http://otpprompts.tumblr.com/post/109885930850/imagine-person-a-lightly-tracing-i-love-you-over): Imagine person A lightly tracing “I love you” over and over again on person B’s back, assuming that person B is asleep. When person A is lying on their back, getting ready to sleep, person B moves closer and wraps their arms around person A, whispering softly, “I love you too.” Bonus if that’s the first time person A has ever declared their love for person B.

It’s not something that she can accept with words, he thinks. She’s a product of the upbringing she’s had, a life lived learning to shelter herself against outward signs of affections, of knowing with a cold, hard certainty that a home was never a  _home_ (not for someone like her), that the only person she could depend on was herself. He won’t be the one to bring about that look she gets sometimes, the shuttered gaze she employs when people get too close and she wants to run away from it all and just start again.  _He won’t_. 

So he traces them across her spine, flowing letters in French along her thoracic curve, a litany of love in German ghosting the skin of her inner thigh. He mouths them onto her clavicle, the words he wants desperately to say, but fears she will reject.  _je t’aime. ich lieb dich. ikh hob dikh. saranghae. te amo._

He doesn’t expect her to ever say the words, not really. The way she runs her fingers through his hair on lazy Sunday mornings? The second cup of joe she leaves on the counter, brewed to his preferences? The way she lets her walls down for him when they are alone? It’s enough for him. He’d never ask her for more.

So when it does come, it comes as a shock and he, Tobias M. Curtis, is stunned into stillness even as his heart leaps in his chest. In the quiet of the dawn, as he lets his fingers dance  _gi melin_  over her hip, she buries her face into the crook of his shoulder and whispers that she loves him too.

(And no more words are needed.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> French, German, Yiddish, Korean, Latin and Elvish (Sindarin) in order. Shut up, Toby totally learned how to speak Elvish as a kid, bet you my first-born on that!


	9. you had me at hello (it's tattooed on my skin)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soulmates AU ficlet, in homage to and inspired by amusewithaview's utterly amazing series [Nothing but love in view](http://archiveofourown.org/series/112871). Beware, it's a little angsty? Like, it's up to you what happens after the end?

_Well it’s nice to meet you too._  

She has it written along the back of her knee, her soulmate’s first words. They’re horrifically generic, in a scrawl that wouldn’t look out of place on a doctor’s note. She used to stare at them in the bathroom mirrors of her various foster homes for hours on end, trying to comfort herself with the knowledge that there was _someone_ out there with room in their heart for her, even if there wasn’t in this home (or in  _that_ home, in all the fucking homes with  _fucking perfect_  families).

Not any more of course. She’s stopped hoping, stopped feeling that nervous jitter whenever someone sarcastically snaps it back at her, whenever they say it with a smile and a firm handshake, whenever they roll their eyes and scoff over their shoulder. She’s tired of looking into their eyes, desperate for a flicker of recognition, only to find nothing there but polite disinterest.

She’s accepted that she might never find her soulmate (some people never do, even  _with_ the words), and she thinks she’s okay with that. She has the rest of the team. She has her dad. She has Toby. This is enough.

(She’s accepted it has to be enough.)

Which is why it’s all the more infuriating when she spies the words Toby has smack across his ass ( _move outta my way, idiot, you’re **breaking** it_) when he is changing at the garage one day;  _her_ words, in  _her_ writing. 

The wrench in her hand falls to the ground with a clang that seems to reverberate through the garage.

 


	10. stop the clock, i wanna get off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For [melancholylouis](http://melancholylouis.tumblr.com/), who wanted Happy and Toby, a very dangerous situation and Happy saving Toby's life. BABE THIS ONE'S FOR YOUUU. Set post-1x18, and you know what that means.

“No, I don’t know how to defuse a bomb, but it can’t be that hard.”

“This is my life you’re gambling with! No,  _stop_ \- ”

“ _Sit_ \- oh my God,  _stop moving_ , you asshole. Sit your ass  _down_ , doc and let me save your life.”

-

He is freaking out. He is completely, utterly and totally freaking out.

He is also really turned on and is, honestly,  _tremendously_ conflicted about it; because on the one hand, he is mere minutes away from a no-good-very-bad-painful death and on the other hand,  _Happy Quinn has her legs wrapped around his waist_. 

Well, all right, she is straddling him because this is as close as she needs to be to defuse the god-damn  _bomb vest_  that’s attached to his body, but if he survives this (please, please,  _please_ ) then all he’s going to take away from this experience is this, the knowledge of her weight settled across his legs, the smattering of freckles that dust her skin and the tiny little furrow of concentration between her brows. 

He could almost forget that he is potentially mere minutes away from death because the proximity of her is so  _sense-addling_ , and for a sudden wild moment, he wants to lean in and kiss her, to lick his way into her mouth and swallow the moans that he knows she would make.  _Stop_ , he tells himself, that’s the damn adrenaline talking. Fight or flight. _Or fuck. Stop thinking about her lips. Or her hair. Or the fact that this might be the last time you ever get to tell her you think you might be in love with her_. (She’d probably just sock him in the mouth for kissing her anyway, at a time like this.)

He clears his throat, the noise loud in the silence of the room. 

“Happy,” he begins. His mouth is so very dry. “Hap, I’m gonna need you to do something for me.”

“If the next thing that comes out of your mouth is ‘save yourself and leave me here’ or anything similar, then the answer is no, Curtis.” Her tone brooks no arguments, and her focus remains on the wires and gadgetry that her hands are currently buried in. “Either we get out of this together, or we don’t. But I’m not leaving you here to die alone.”

He... he is suddenly, overwhelmingly, humbled by what she has just said, and Toby can do little more than look down at her, flabbergasted. She’s deadly serious. There’s nothing he can say to make her change her mind, and he knows that it would be pointless to try - what Happy wants to do, Happy will  _do_ , even if that means risking her own life to save his. “I - okay. Then it’s a good thing I wasn’t about say that,” he manages past the lump in his throat. “Because I was actually gonna ask you  _not_ to leave.” She flicks a glance up at him, and he knows that  _she_ knows that that’s a lie. He was totally going to ask her to get the hell out of there, to - you know -  _live_ and not be a fine spray of pink mist in very short order. 

_Beep. Beep. Be---_

Happy suddenly sits back, beaming with satisfaction, and Toby’s breath catches in his throat and his heart seizes as her legs tighten against his waist. “Piece of cake. I told you I could do it.”

_You could do me_ , he thinks dizzily as a wave of relief crashes through him - he’s not going to die. Not today anyway. “Hooray,” he says weakly, and with fear-shaky fingers he tugs at the now harmless vest. “You wanna help me get this thing off? It’s not a good look on me.” 

Happy smirks as she fingers the hem. “Yeah, it’s not exactly made of boyfriend material.” Toby chokes as she tightens her legs again. It’s slow and deliberate this time, and her eyes - how did he miss that? - glimmer with intent. She has her lower lip caught between her teeth, and Toby is again made aware of his uncomfortable and very inappropriate arousal.

“Happy...?”

“Shut up, doc,” she says, and pulls him down for a kiss. “I’ve just saved your life. How about you show a little appreciation?”

So he does.  _With enthusiasm_.


	11. an ocean to drown in

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An anon prompted [melancholylouis](http://melancholylouis.tumblr.com/) with "Happy and Toby get in some precarious situation in water and happy tells him she doesn't know how to swim". When she passed it on to me, I made it sad. 
> 
> WARNINGS: potential character death, drowning, badly researched descriptions of hypothermia.

He used to take charge during his mom’s episodes, he tells her, made sure that his little brother and sister looked clean and presentable before they went off to school. He reveals, with a wry twist of his mouth, that he doesn’t remember her like he’s seen in old photos, coiffed and wonderful and perfect - his memories of her are fractured and confused, and she was often unable to do much more for him than run a limp hand through his hair. Happy, her own hair stringy about her face, looks up at him with a steadiness that surprises him, considering their situation, and her lack of swimming ability. 

_We’re not about to die, doc._

_We might,_ he argues, _And if we do, I’m not gonna -_

_You’re not gonna anything, because we aren’t dying. They’ll find us._

They tread water (her with little ease), keeping their heads above the surface. And they wait.

-

He doesn’t know how long it’s been, but it’s cold, _so much colder_ than it had been when the water had swirled around their shins, lapped at their thighs. He thinks it may have dropped eight, nine degrees since they were thrown in by their captors - to take a page out of Happy’s book, _not good_.

The water continues to rise around them, slow and steady and as relentless as a glacier, and God, this is probably it. He gets it, he has said that (or some variant of it), at least two dozen times in the past year alone, but he thinks this might be _it_. The big one.  

_Walter will save us_ , a refrain spoken with such assurance at first, with conviction - Walter always finds a way. Cabe will never stop looking, Sylvester will pour through the data until they are found. Paige will encourage them to never lose faith.

Except it has been what feels like _hours_ , and they are tiring, _godsotired_ , and Toby has Happy tucked tight against him, where he can feel the tremors of cold shake her body.

Hypothermia, he notes in a distant, clinical corner of his mind, will affect both of them eventually, but her frame is smaller than his; and she’s displaying all the symptoms of a mild case. He thinks she might have another half an hour before it becomes moderate, perhaps another twenty minutes at best after that before she slips into unconsciousness.

They cling to one another, desperately trying to lock as much warmth in as they can, leaching heat and providing it back in return. Toby knows, a thrill of fear running through him, that at this rate, the cold will kill them first, and they won’t be awake or conscious enough to know when they are drowning.

He doesn’t think he can do this, _die_ , without letting her know exactly how much he adores her, how it feels, to fall in love with her. The way his heart seizes has nothing to do with the chill of the water and everything to do with the fact that there is _so much more_ that they haven’t done. He wants to do it, to bare it all now, lay his soul out for her to dissect like a butterfly pinned against a board (a CPU unit, disassembled), but the words lodge, catch in his throat, because Happy is failing (speech slurring, movement sluggish), and he needs to keep her awake.

_Tell me something. Hey, come on, sweetheart, don’t close your eyes. Tell me something, dollface._

_C-call me dollface again and w-we’ll s-see who’s gonna die first._ He cracks a smile; lucid enough to take offence is lucid enough to _live_ . He smooths away the hair sticking to her too-cool face, and she instinctively leans in, seeking out what little warmth he has to offer. (Cold she’s too fucking cold come on Walter where the hell are you please find us save us _save her_ .) _Don’t tell me you d-don’t like it, sugarpop, I know you do. No, don’t rest, come on, tell me something you’ve never told anyone else before._

_N-now?_ Her voice, shaky and shuddering as it is, is incredulous. _You want to do t-this now, doc?_

_Yes. Now. Come on, Hap. Who was your first kiss? What was your first ever day at school like? Tell me about the last time you ever went to church and why you stopped._

_How did you -_

_Genius shrink, remember?_

Lucid enough to laugh, even if it’s a breathy little thing that whispers cold air into the hollow of his neck. And she begins to talk.

-

Happy stops shivering. _Stay with me, Happy,_ Toby presses her, as her head lolls again onto his shoulder. With some effort, she lifts herself up to look at him. Her lips are tinged blue, and her eyes are dazed and sleepy. Happy, of the Maryvale orphanage. Happy, who once stole a pack of gum from a dimestore when she was six years and five months old, because the cashier was a racist shit. Happy, who kissed boys and girls under the twilight skies in downtown LA, who has only just started to open up to him. Happy, the woman he thinks he wants to marry, to wake up with each morning, to make smile every single _fucking_ day.

_Don’t g-go to sleep on me now, Happy, you still haven’t told me how y-you hacked the school’s tannoy system._ He sweeps a hand up and down her back with an assurance he doesn’t feel. _You haven’t finished the story. Don’t you wanna f-finish the story before you take a nap?_

_Toby…?_ She slumps forward again, mouthing words, nonsense into his shoulder, and he knows she’s losing consciousness. He hitches her higher up on himself, one arm firmly tucking itself under her thighs, and - there - they’re high enough now in the ever-rising water that he can thread his arm around a bar set up on the wall. His hand now free, he slides it down into the water, tangling his fingers with hers.

He murmurs words against her hair, whispered secrets, past shame and suppressed thoughts from yesteryear. _Come on Happy, d-don’t you want to r-remember all of this so you can use it against me w-when, when we’re out of here?_ He tells her about the disdain he felt towards his father (the love too), the hurt that lingers from the rejection of his siblings, the first time he ever gambled at the craps table with the fifty bucks he stole from his then-best friend. He confides with a voice that gets more shaky with it, the cold and the fear and the drowsiness, about the first time he saw her, walking into the garage with the afternoon light filtering in through the door behind her. He tells her how he wanted to kiss then, because she was beautiful and he was an egotistical ass, and when she had kicked the chair from under Walter (because _he_ was being an ass too), he had simply laughed and laughed because… _Happy, please don’t do this, don’t g-go._

He stutters them into her ear, how she makes him feel, the way she makes him want to be the best version of himself, how much he wants to kiss her right now, how she’s still so beautiful and he loves her, loves her mind, her ingenuity, how she punches, how she’s so much smarter than he is. He bares it all, his soul, and doesn’t think about how this could be the last time he gets to say it, to hold her. To love her.

-

_You can’t... die on me, Happy Quinn,_ he manages and he is so tired now. He isn’t even cold anymore, and he thinks that should mean something. It doesn’t. _Not... when I’ve only just got to... know you._

He closes his eyes, thankful, in a distant way, that his hand is so cold that he can’t unlock his fingers from the knots of hers, that they’ll go down together. _Morbid_ , he thinks, and can’t muster the energy to smile at it. Sleep is good, right? Sleep sounds very good.

Distant, muted sounds echo in his ears as he gives into it, the dark bliss and welcome relief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Light at the end of the tunnel, right? You get to decide if they get rescued or not, so don't be sad. I'm just an awful person and like to make my stories vague and cliffhanger-ish.


	12. (statistically speaking) the odds are stacked against us [au]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hunger Games AU: In which Toby hears about the third Quarter Quell and calls Happy. 
> 
> Like any victor, Toby left the Games, but the Games never left him. 
> 
>  
> 
> **[trigger warning: description of panic attack symptoms]**

**_"On the seventy-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the male and female tributes will be reaped from their existing pool of victors."_ **

No.  _No._

He is on the phone almost before the words have left President Snow’s mouth, punching in Happy’s number with fear-shaky fingers and a gut that _roils_ with dread. 

(The dimheat _glow_ of the arena, the hot, stifling air as the flames press in closer behind him, the inhuman screams of rage and pain from the other tributes - he can see it behind the back of his eyelids, can feel the gritty sand and dirt under his nails like it was fucking _yesterday_ , not years and years behind him.

He can’t go back there again, he  _can’t_.)

The phone rings, once, twice, three times before she picks up with a curt  _I saw it_ , and he doesn’t know if he wants to throw up or cry or laugh or all of them all at once, and he ducks his head between his legs, forces himself to breathe slow and even. 

“Wh-what do we, uh. What d-do we do?” Toby stutters between one choked breath and the next. The room greys a little at the edges of his vision and he squeezes his eyes shut tight against it.  _Don’t think about it,_ he chants silently to himself,  _don’t think about how this fucking house has been bought with blood, don’t think about it, you’re not there, don’t think don’t thinkdon’tthink-_ and then there is nothing more but a dim roaring in his ears and the phantom feeling of a heart (warmslippery _wet_ ) beneath his hands that slows and stutters and _stops_ …

“…d you’ve just got to concentrate on my voice right now. Hey, doc, come on now,  _breathe_ with me okay?” 

Toby thinks she has been speaking to him for a while - the broadcast has long since finished - and he manages, past the choking terror and panic, to hiccough his assent into the mouthpiece, and draws in deep  _one-two-three-four-five_  on her count and out  _one-two-three-four-five_  until the worst of the shaking subsides. 

Not for the first time, he wishes desperately that he could be with her, to bury himself into the crook of her neck, to breathe in deep the grease and salt and warmth of her, to settle himself so fully into the creases of her being that he sinks into her (and not for the first time, he curses the Capitol, curses Snow, curses the first rebels, curses himself). This is, Toby thinks, no way to live. 

_We can’t go on like this._

Minutes pass before he trusts himself to speak.  _What do we do?_  he asks her once again.

“We call Walter,” Happy eventually tells him. “We call Cabe.”  _We call the cyclone,_  she means. _We call Plutarch,_ and Toby understands (and  _fuck_ , he wishes he doesn't), because the screen in the living room is cycling through the victors of the Games to date, and it ends with the winning star-crossed lovers from District Twelve.

_It’s time._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The cyclone are all victors and they are minor league players in the second rebellion. As far as I'm concerned right now, they were in the series, you just never heard about them from Katniss's POV, okay.


	13. oh baby, when you wave your fins at me [au, crack]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Picture this: magical creature and human trope, with Toby as the asshole, annoying as hell, 'why can't you just fit the stereotype and be all mysterious and shit' magical creature.

He’s… he’s not at _all_ like the merfolk in the stories she’s heard; alluring, cruel and cunning.

_He is_ , Happy decides as he shoots her a shit-eating grin from the side of the dock,  _a bit of an asshole actually._

“If you’re about to ask me what a girl like me is doing in a place like this,” she drawls, wrench held loosely in one hand, “I may have to throw this at your head, fish-brain.”

If anything, the merman looks even more delighted at the threat. “Please, sweetheart, like you’d want to do that. Which other pretty-boy are you gonna ask to bring up your tools when you deliberately throw them off the side of the dock?”

“I don’t  _throw_ them off, they  _fall_ off the side-”

“A likely story,” he retorts, flicking a spray of water over his head at her. “You’ve been doing it for  _weeks_ now - you could have found a better place to fix your stuff instead of here on the dock of the bay. I know what salt does to metal. Admit it, you just can’t get enough of the Tobe-ster.”

Happy scoffs, rolling her eyes at the merman ( _Tobe-ster? are you fucking kidding me?_ ), and drops the wrench to the ground with a clang in favour of throwing half of her sandwich at him instead. He catches it before it hits his face of course, because  _stupid fucking merfolk reflexes_.

“Refer to yourself as that again and you’ll never get another Philly again, I swear to God.”

It is his turn to roll his eyes at her, mumbling between happy mouthfuls of steak and bread that he only does it because she loves it, which she laughs at, because  _hell no, I don’t._ And she doesn’t, because wow, talk about egotistical asshattery behaviour. 

(The rest though? She can live with the rest.)


	14. drawn in again and again (and again and again)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy is immortal, Happy is a concept, Happy is an idea born out of an idea, and Happy has fallen for Toby (or the essence of this being that becomes Toby) life after life after life. This life is no different.
> 
> [I'm always gonna be toying with the idea of expanding this one, but this little bit is short and sweet enough to work on it's own.]

_It’s him._

Her heart constricts with a one-two- _ohmygod_ -three that she feels rattle through her and settle deep into her bones. She knows those eyes.

(Lives full of laughter and sorrow and anger, lives full of  _love_ and each time,  _God_ , each time she loses them to old age, to society, to war and each time she swears never. again.)

He holds his hand out to her with a cocky half-smile and blinks those fucking eyes at her, and she wants to draw indifference around her shoulders like a mantle and let it shield her from what will come.

But she  _can’t_.

He looks at her with those goddamn eyes and she knows (she  _knows_ ) she’s lost again.


	15. we go together baby, like cheese and wine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2x01: satellite of love  
> Because only these two dorks would confess to something that's-not-yet-love (but by golly it wants to get there) with metaphors about mould on cheese.

_“I’m scared.”_

A dozen asinine, glib comments spring to mind, but he catches them in his throat, swallows them down because now is  _not_ the time - not when she looks at him with that look in her eye, guarded and wary. It’s the first time she has ever admitted to feeling  _scared_  and he tells her so, knows she isn’t (and is) talking about her eyesight.

(he gets it, he does, remembers that feeling of abandonment by his dad, recalls watching helplessly as his mom slipped away from him inch by agonising inch, knows with aching familiarity the walls that are built to protect the heart from pain)

“Happy, do you know there’s a better chance of a nuclear apocalypse than of me ever hurting you?”

She doesn’t call him out on the fact that they’ve had to avert one or two of those particular disasters themselves, doesn’t remind him of a date that never happened, but the hard lines of her body (poised for flight, tense with the effort of staying herself) soften as she glances back at him and _God_ , he doesn’t think he could ever love her more than he does right now.

He’s wrong of course, and when she throws his words back at him (’a rare and delightful fungus’, she snarks), it’s all he can do to stop himself from leaning forward to chase that thread of hope into her mouth, because it is begrudging, it is reluctant, it is so ridiculously Happy, and it’s a  _step_. 

And he’s okay with that.


	16. if your lips are poison then your words are like wine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "i’ve been musing over the evil cyclone ficlet i posted [way back when](http://northerngirlchild.tumblr.com/post/112080890788/the-sting-in-their-tails), and how they might interact with one another in an au where they’ve learnt to utilise their powers for dark selfish purposes. more intense, maybe even a little baser, all the intelligence but with less self control." - grabbed from my tumblr, this is old, i just forgot to post this up here
> 
> WARNINGS: dark, possessive thoughts, thoughts of bloodplay and torture?

She kisses him like she does everything else in life - with ferocity and _bite_ \- and he loves the way she crowds in to lave at the cut on his lip, the relish with which she drinks in his hiss of pain as she pulls at his hair. 

He skims his hands down her arms, feels the sinewy strength in them and thinks he will write his devotion across them with the edge of a scalpel, mark her the same way she has marked his fucking heart. He traces formulas across the silk of her back (wants to outline a masterpiece in blood), lingers at the base of her spine (where he might slice through, sever the connections in her spinal cord, render her powerless to him). He slides down to cup her arse, presses bruises into the flesh with his fingers and feels a thrill of satisfaction that she is letting him do this. 

Toby knows a hundred (a thousand) ways to kill a person. He knows how to apply pressure to the trachea just so, where best to nick an artery and watch the dazzling display of life spray out from a body, how to make someone scream in agony and _beg_ for it - beg to succumb, to rest, to die. He is a man who knows his profession like he knows the back of his hand, can meter out pain like he was born to do it, but in the face of the storm that is Happy Quinn, he is helpless. 

(He thinks he’s been helpless, caught in the pull of her ever since she blew into the garage, a hell-cat in leather boots and packing a mean right hook. He was lost from the moment she had elbowed him in the kidney, told him _he was beneath her and always would be_

He’d kill for Walter, kill for any of them and has done so a hundred - a thousand - times. He thinks he’d _live_ for her.)

“Happy,” he breathes, but she slides a hand up to rest across his throat, presses in with a _shush_ of warning that makes his chest hitch and his hips jerk. He knows the strength in those hands intimately, has seen her squeeze the life out of their marks with relish, and it shouldn’t turn him on as much as ( _godyespleaseharderHARDER_ ) it does.

“Don’t talk, doc,” she laughs into his ear. “Don’t ruin it.”

_You can’t fight against the wind_ , he thinks dizzily as her other hand makes it way down his chest, under the band of his jeans. _You only surrender to it._


	17. a sour herb of grace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2x05: super fun guys
> 
> Because it's one thing to tell someone this is what's going down, and then when it does you wonder if you wanted that at all.  
> The title has MEANING and shit okay, it's taken from Richard III ('here is this place/i'll set a bank of rue a sour herb of grace'). Again, this isn't new, I just forgot to crosspost this up here from when the episode aired.

_Raincheck?_ , he offers her with raised eyebrows and a smile, and it’s a little strange and unsettling the way his eyes flicker away. She had told him though, hadn’t she, that she wasn’t going to forget the _hours_ she had spent sat alone at a restaurant table, that she was scared and that they weren’t going to be anything more than what they are now.

_Sure_ , she smiles, and she turns her back on the bustle and clatter in the garage, doesn’t focus on the murmured conversation between him and Sly or the Toby-weighted footsteps that echo in her wake. She swallows the irritation that she can taste at the back of her mouth and feels it settle somewhere in her chest, ignores the tiny furrow she can feel blooming between her brows.

_Pal_ , she had called him, _friends and nothing more_ , she had as good as told him.

(She just maybe… hadn’t actually expected him to take her at her word for it.)


	18. drawn in again and again (and again and again) - an expansion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy is an idea, a thought, the embodiment of inspiration. Walter calls her a mechanical prodigy, but he's wrong - she _is_ , in a way, mechanics. 
> 
> [chapter 14 redux, or an expansion, a remix, the ideas i half wrote and forgot about]

She isn’t twenty-seven. Or twenty-eight, twenty-six - or anything, really.

Happy just… is.

Happy is mechanics and technological advancement. Happy is logic and the use of tools, Happy is the first time man built, created, advanced. When people began to understand the use of stone, they created the wisps that became Happy (which isn't even her name - her name, if she ever had one, is lost now, forgotten by all but that which first breathed it into existence). When man invented the wheel, she was fleshed further still. When metal was shaped and bent to the will of humans, Happy’s laugh were the hot sparks.

On and on and on, Happy was there; because Happy always _was_.

Happy isn't a god, she was never worshipped for herself. She doesn’t claim to be the protectorate of those who craft, who make, because who wants that responsibility? She never named herself Vulcan (who was an ass), Hephaestus (who wasn’t), Kothar-wa-Khasis, or any of the others. She never gave herself names or depictions. She did not leave legends to linger in her wake. Happy is merely the proof of people’s belief in tools, in objects that can be used to create (and destroy). Happy was just one of many beings called into existence because of belief. But the oldest ones (gods, they called them - humans, what do they know?) are all but gone now, fading from existence when their last true believers die - look-to-the-stars-to-guide-my-thought, tend-the-fruit-to-survive-the-storm, take-my-love-to-the-other-side; each of them lost - not truly dead but _unfound,_ lessened and without awareness.

Happy survives, one of the few from the beginning because men always need logic and creation, have still use for mechanics and its principles.

All those that went before her - where does an idea go when it truly dies? Happy doesn’t know, doesn’t want to know. They don’t have a religion, they _are_ religion. So she chooses to live among them, to be inspiration and muse so that she continues to exist (so many that she knew gone gone _gone_ ). She guides the hands of genius craftsmen when they carve from marble, sells Michelangelo his first tools. She is wave of tiredness that enables Newton’s decision to sit under a tree, directs him down a road with a careless wave. She, in whimsy, wonders out loud if man could walk on water in the presence of Da Vinci.

She takes lovers over the centuries, women with loving smiles and biting words, with nails that paint her back with agonising, devoted love. Men with deep voices and deeper desires, with eyes that sparkle and laughter that fills her soul like smoke. She kisses her wife in the Tang dynasty on a street in Hongcun, she makes love to her husband in Chicago in the 1920s.

Toby? Toby was a pagan, who had sworn himself to a life of silence. He was a firefly that had briefly lighted upon her shoulder one sticky-humid Iowa evening. He was a sobbing child that clung to her legs in Istanbul, an old woman who kissed her hand with reverence on an island that now lies beneath the ocean, a Mayan priestess that had fervently wished to touch the stars. Toby has lived again and again and again and he doesn't remember a thing because that's the way it goes. But his eyes? They remain the same, and Happy (created from thoughts and ideas and inspiration), oh, she _knows_ those eyes and would recognise them anywhere.

It gets a little harder every time - life, sparking into existence and snuffed out in a blink of an eye. It hurts. She can fix things, tools, objects. She can’t fix what is already life. So she tries, every time she finds him or he finds her to avoid being caught up in his story. His life, his tale, it leads to her heartbreak, every time. When he dies of skyflower. Of polio. A gunshot wound. Old age. And yet, every time, she is drawn back into it, because of his eyes, her smile, the gentle flutter of his wings beating a staccato rhythm against her immortal skin. Each time she tells herself _never again_ , but each time she breaks that vow.

She meets Walter, with a mind that races with ideas so bright and persuasive that she finds herself caught in the current of them, almost helplessly so. She finds she can’t bring herself to leave him, or the people he calls family - even when she meets Toby (Alexi, he had whispered in the dead of night in the midst of the February Revolution, Kali, she had shouted over the roar of the Zambezi river) and she finds herself looking into _those eyes_.

He looks at her with eyes that worship and sparkle and love, and she remembers life after life after life where this has happened before, wishes it weren’t so. _I’m going to watch him die again_ , she thinks, and returns his greetings with bite. It doesn’t last of course, because she’s never been able to keep herself away.

Toby, he’s called in this life, _Toviyah_ , and she fights to remember it (Toby, Toby, _Toby_ , not Annabelle, not Malakai). But for all her strength (and she is strong, she is so strong), she is also tired. She trips up sometimes, when she’s exhausted, when she feels alone in the universe, when she feels lost in time - whispers words to him in the despairing syllables of a long dead language, calls him her _baobei_ and _zvezda_ when the night is old and the day is young.

(They live and love, because of course they do. This is a love song, not a dirge.)

He is her linchpin, she tells him as he lies in a hospital bed, age having caught up with his mind, a life lived on the edge of danger having finally taken their toll on him. He can’t go, she warns him. She won’t be Happy Quinn after this, _can’t_ be - not when Walter has gone, when all their family are six feet under, their souls nothing but memories and stardust.

_See you next life, kid,_ he jokes with a weary smile, relentlessly cheerful to the end. She can’t help but laugh - because he’s more right than he thinks he is. _Okay_ , she tells him. _Okay_. And when he closes those beautiful eyes for the last time, she tells herself this was the last time - just the the time before that, and the time before that too. It’s the only thing she’s ever been wrong about.

  
She doesn’t mind being wrong though, not really.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rushed? Unfinished idea? Ha ha ha. I don't know what you mean. Yeah okay, if this sounds hella rushed and unfinished, that's because it is. I stopped watching Scorpion near the end of s2, for reasons. But I still loved this idea enough to dig it out of my docs and expand this universe a little. This, with THG au somewhere further back, are ones I like enough to do little things like this once in a while.

**Author's Note:**

> I put very incoherent explainings of my fic writing as tags on my Tumblr. If you like, feel free to check them out. [northerngirlchild](http://northerngirlchild.tumblr.com/tagged/fic-not-fic)


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